Vernon Subutex E-Book

Michel Dyer

• Herausgeber: BrightSummaries.com
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 29

Beschreibung

What should we learn from Vernon Subutex (volume 1), this nightmarish dive into the strata of contemporary society? Find everything you need to know about this work in a complete and detailed analysis.
You will find in particular in this file :
- A complete summary
- A presentation of the main characters such as Vernon Subutex and Alex Bleach
- An analysis of the specificities of the work: A polyphonic novel - towards a human comedy of the nineteenth century; The use of internal focus; A sharp social criticism
A reference analysis to quickly understand the meaning of the work.

Leseprobe

VIRGINIE DESPENTES

FRENCH WRITER AND DIRECTOR

•Born in 1969 in Nancy

•Some of her works:

°Fuck Me (1994), novel

°Les Jolies Choses (1998), novel

°King Kong Theory (2006), autobiographical essay

Virginie Despentes is a controversial figure in French literature at the turn of the century. She gained instant fame with the sultry success of her first novel, Baise-moi, in 1994, and has long been viewed through the prism of her past as a prostitute. While her work has sometimes been characterised as pornographic, her novels are far more complex, as evidenced by the various awards she has won, including the prestigious Prix Renaudot for Apocalypse bébé in 2010.

Virginie Despentes is a major contemporary author, in particular because of her commitment to issues of social, identity, and sexual marginalisation. Her work on language and orality is also remarkable.

VERNON SUBUTEX, VOLUME 1

A NIGHTMARISH DIVE INTO OUR CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY

•Genre: novel

•Reference edition: Vernon Subutex, volume 1, Paris, Grasset, 2015, 430 p.

•1st edition: 2015

•Themes: poverty, social exclusion, anti-capitalist critique, grief, investigation, rock

Published in 2015, the first volume of the Vernon Subutex trilogy is a literary phenomenon, with over 300,000 copies sold. A virulent and disillusioned critique of contemporary society, the work has found a tremendous response from the public, but also from the critics, who are mostly positive.

SUMMARY

AN ANTI-HERO

The novel opens with the precarious situation of Vernon, a former record dealer approaching fifty. Unemployed since the closure of his shop, and off the RSA, he sees his capital gradually dwindling, along with his material needs. He learns to live without television, without heating, without electricity, without furniture, and, finally, without Internet. When he finds an old photo of himself posing as a young man with his three best friends from that time, he realises that they have all died recently. The last of the dead is Alex Bleach, a successful singer who often helped Vernon financially. Without this support, Vernon cannot avoid being evicted from his home, in a daze that makes the scene unreal. Without a roof over his head, without money, without friends, Vernon gathers up his meagre possessions (which include unreleased video interviews with Alex) and begins a tour of his acquaintances in order to continue living as he has done for years.

THE WALTZ OF KNOWLEDGE

The rest of the novel is built on the principle of the variation of points of view - most of the chapters alternate between Vernon's vision and that of the different people he meets. Vernon is hosted successively by Emily, a former member of Alex Bleach's first rock band, and then Xavier, a childhood friend who now seems to lead a life of orderliness at the opposite end of the spectrum from Vernon's. Vernon is then welcomed into the bed of his mother, who is the only one who has ever seen him. He is then welcomed into the bed of Sylvie, a divorced mother who has fantasised about him for years and quickly becomes possessive - Vernon runs away by stealing enough to live on for a few days before going to the home of Lydia, a young journalist who is interested in Alex Bleach.